Not The Prey, Not The Hunters
by Levaya Jade
Summary: After Karla Jaeger is brutally killed in her house by a rogue animal, her son, Eren Jaeger begins to fall into a downward spiral without either of his parents to look after him, as his father, Grisha, had disappeared years ago. But one day, when he visits the house where his mother died, he too is attacked by an wild animal, only to be saved by another.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: I do not own anything you recognize from the manga and/or anime called **_**Shingeki no Kyojin **_**or **_**Attack on Titan**_**. Anything you don't recognize is mine.**

**..**

It really was hard to believe that everything had started from one little dog. A dog which had wandered up to his mother and begged to be feed that one time when he and his sister had been at school. And the same dog that Karla Jaeger had invited inside one night with the promise of much more delicious dog food.

The doors of Eren and Mikasa Jaeger had remained closed that night, Mikasa's because of her studying and Eren's because of his secretive video game playing while he should have been studying. But in the morning, the doors opened and the two teenagers descended into the kitchen, their mother's domain. And to their surprise, a dog was inhabiting the domain of the mother.

He had his face stuffed into a silver bowl, gobbling down food so fast it sounded like he was choking. He didn't even lift his head when the two tramping down the stairs. Or when they pulled to a quick, harsh stop.

Their mother turned to them with a pan full of eggs and plate of bacon already sitting on the table. "Good morning kids," she said with the same cheerful smile she had on every morning. Mikasa's eyes darting back and forth from that smile to the dog, her face as impassive as ever, while Eren stared in obvious shock, his green-blue eyes wide and his mouth open.

"Um," Eren said unsurely, "um, Mom, is that a dog?"

Karla Jaeger looked at her son for a second before pulling out two plates and sliding the eggs down onto them. "Of course it is Eren." She looked back down at the dog still wolfing down the food. "Some sort of mix it looked like. He came up to me two days, begging for food. I gave him some, and he came back and scratched at the door yesterday night. I let him in and gave him a bath and some food. I was going to put him back outside, but I just didn't have the heart for it."

"Are we keeping him?" Mikasa asked, sitting at the table and pulling her plate of eggs closer to her. Eren shifted his surprised gaze from his mother to his sister before firmly shutting his jaw, sighing and sitting.

"So what's his name?"

Karla shrugged. As she opened her mouth to properly reply, the her cell phone started ringing loudly. She pulled it out of her pocket and held it up close to her ear, before speaking again, "haven't decided yet," she said. "Now, quickly, eat your breakfast. You don't want to be late."

"Hello?" she said into her phone. "Yes, this is Karla Jaeger. What can I do for you?"

The sound of dog eating stopped suddenly and, when Eren looked up, he saw the dog looking up at his mother, ears pricked and blue eyes wide. The dog started at Karla for several minutes longer before his ears dropped and he walked away, his long claws clicking loudly on the wooden floors of their house.

Eren stared after the dog for a moment, wondering why he had left when there was still even the littlest bit of food left in that silver bowl, which there was. Not much, but some. But there the dog went, his tail bobbing off into the living room.

But Eren just shrugged, putting the dog's weird behavior aside. After all, how was he supposed to know why a dog did what it did?

..

The room was large, dark, but light even to read, write, and see clearly. There was a neat desk in front of large windows with drawn curtains and a door on the left wall across from the desk. Otherwise, the room was empty, the long and tall walls bare.

The harsh ringing of a simple phone on the desk echoed around the plain room. Nothing in the room moved for a moment as the ringing continued, but then something rustled, scraping against the cold, grey tiled floor. The massive head of a tiger popped out from under the desk, it's eyes resting on the ringing phone for a moment before it slid out from under that desk.

Just after it's long tail escaped from underneath the desk, it reared up onto it's power hind legs and _changed_. It's huge front paws turned into hands, claws into fingers. The tail shrunk into nothing, and it's fur turned to the pale, naked skin of a tall, human man. The head was human too now, but the eyes were still just as they were in the form of a tiger.

He reached over the desk with a long, thin but well muscled arm, and curled his pale fingers around the phone, answering it with a cold, "hello."

"Sir!" The voice was panicked and loud, but grainy. "Sir, it's Brandt."

The tall human man's lips tighten ever so slightly. "Brandt," he said coldly, "of course. It has been a _long_ time hasn't it. _Brandt_," he said, "why are you calling me, after all this _time_."

"Sir, I understand you're not happy with me-"

"Not happy is quite an understatement, Brandt," the tall man said. "Speak quickly now."

"I found them, sir," Brandt blurted out. "I found them. I found _her_."

The tall man went completely still, not even blinking, just breathing quietly into the phone where Brandt trembled sliently on the side of his pay phone. "Tell me everything, Brandt. Tell me everything and I'll forget everything you have done. Tell me where to find them. _Now_."

..

There was a click as the phone was once again rested on it's base. The man who had placed it back on it's holder was fairly short and a little chubby. He leaned back in his rather plush chair and looked up at a muscling man. He nodded at this man from behind this desk, thanking him before turning in his chair and looking out a wide open window.

The room this man sat in was far more lavish than the other was. There were far more windows, and pictures adorned painted walls. A fancy chandelier hung from the ceiling. Everything in it was light, but formal and proud. Very proud.

"Well," this man said, his voice and tone just as proud and formal at the room looked. "I think it's obvious what we have to do now."

The muscled man nodded. "We will leave at once Mr. Reiss."

..

Brandt could smell them coming from his spot not far off from the Jaeger's house. They were coming through the woods behind the house, which did not surprise him at all. Their kind didn't appreciate cars too much. Something wild in them called to them, called them back to the forests and to the woodlands.

They were close now, and there was blood in the air. Fresh blood. They had made a kill on their way, something that was common practice. The scent and taste of blood riled up the starving creatures and made them even more vicious. It most likely wasn't anything too big, but enough to get the taste of blood on their lips.

And there they were. Kenny Ackerman led the way out of the closed trees, his massive Siberian tiger form blending in frighteningly well with the trees surrounding them. Behind him fanned a small group of his fighters: two wolves, a mountain lion and yes, that was a hyena. _Fantastic_. Brandt despised the hyenas that Kenny seemed so fond of. They were brutal even among the fighters in the ring, and powerful too, despite their relatively smaller size. Because of their worth, Kenny favored those creatures, and he treated them quite well for his standards.

Brandt shook off old envious feelings as Kenny approached him even closer. His tiger form reared upward, and he transformed back into him human form. Brandt almost always forgot how thin Kenny's body really was, especially compared to his huge tiger form, though both were well built.

But Brandt had to focus now. Kenny was waiting for him to change as well, waiting for him to lead them to the family. To the Jaegers. And so Brandt rose up and did what Kenny expected him to, just this one final time.

"They're in a house," Brandt said as soon as he finished transforming. He would not greet Kenny submissively like he once had. Not anymore. "It's not far from here at all. It's the wife, the child and the girl."

Kenny did not make a single sound. He just stared at Brandt with that cold, dead gaze of his that reeked of danger. He was waiting for something and it wasn't hard for Brandt to figure out what it was. Though it made his skin crawl and his hair lift up in the back of his neck to do so, he kept his gaze steady, but he did what Kenny was waiting for. "Sir," Brandt muttered.

"Good," Kenny said finally. "We will attack immediately."

And he shifted back into his tiger form, pushing past Brandt and towards the house. The fighters he had brought with him followed and Brandt could sense their bloodlust. He felt bad for the family inside, for they would surely be ripped apart by these powerful creatures. Well, he almost felt bad. After all, better this family than him.

It really was simple getting into the house. Kenny reared upward and smashed his way through the front door, his tiger form's incredible strength more than enough to knock it off it's hinges.

Kenny disappeared into the house with the hyena right behind him, salivating for flesh and blood.

And that was when all hell broke loose.

A leopard harried out of the undergrowth and leaped upward, it's claws tearing deep into the haunches of one of the wolves. It cried out in pain and tried to shake the big cat off… but Brandt knew from experience that a cats' claws were not so easily removed. But the team Kenny brought had it's own big cat.

The mountain lion snarled and sunk its teeth into one of the leopards paws, ripping it out of the wolf's flesh. The wolf screamed in pain, but the mountain lion did not stop its attack. This was not unusual behavior whatsoever. In battle, the fighters of the ring followed two simple rules: one, the instinct of survival of course, and two, the orders of Kenny Ackerman or Rod Reiss. For if the orders were not followed, it meant that survival would not be achieved.

But this was it. The rivalry between the two leaders of the ring was still just as strong and bloody as before, Brandt could see. The leopard was being beaten into the ground by the wolves and the cougar, it's blood splattering over the undergrowth.

Another bulky fighter from Rod Reiss's side crashed through the forest. This one was a dog, an Akita, and it growled deeply, pulling his lips back in a snarl. Brandt knew about these dogs. They were bigger and stronger than his canine form by design and Brandt was out of practice compared to that fighter. With a tiny whimper that he tried his best to hide, Brandt turned tail and darted into the Jaeger's house.

It was a complete mess on the inside. Wooden splinters lined the ground and several lodged themselves in the bottom of his feet. They stung when he moved but Brandt had had far worse in the ring. He cautiously kept moving forward for the smell of blood was so heavy in the air that Brandt could not tell where Kenny or the hyena he had with him, and it would have been horrible for him to get in the way of either one.

That was when Karla Jaeger shrieked. A shriek of pain. They had found her and now they were torturing her.

The footsteps that echoed through the still house surprised Brandt. They were fast paced and only one pair. She was running and they weren't chasing her. Why? Why weren't they following? Kenny and all of his rabid animals loved a chase.

Before he could even begin running through reasons why, Karla Jaeger barreled down the stairs. Her hair was tangled and sticking to her cheeks because of the tears and sweat pouring down her face. Her feet were scratched up and her blood poured from her thigh. Adrenaline was obviously aiding her because she would have never made it that far without it.

She froze when she saw him at the bottom of the stairs, looking at him with haunted and hopeless eyes. Brandt knew then she recognized him as the dog she had taken in and fed. And for the first time, Brandt realize that this, what he had done to Karla Jaeger and her family was _wrong_.

But it was far too late to do anything about it. He could not even try to help her without hurting himself, and that was something he would never do.

Karla Jaeger opened her mouth but before she could utter a word, the hyena was there. It tore into the back of her neck, it's teeth locking over her spine, and Brandt could hear the crack it made as the hyena crushed it between her jaw, it's face stained with her blood. Karla Jaeger's uneven breathing stuttered to a stop and she went limp in the hyena's jaws.


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer: I do not own anything you recognize from the manga and/or anime called **_**Shingeki no Kyojin **_**or **_**Attack on Titan**_**. Anything you don't recognize is mine. **

..

The hyena dropped the dead women onto the stairs. She tumbled down to the bottom and landed with a thud only a few paces from the stunned dog transformation. The hyena snarled at Brandt who stumbled a couple paces back as fast as he could. It leaped down the few stairs to Karla's body and hovered over it.

"Leave her," came Kenny's voice from the top of the stairs. Both he and the hyena turned to look at him as soon as they heard his voice. Brandt had seen Kenny like that many times before, and it never failed to remind him why he had followed him all those years. Rod Reiss and Kenny Ackerman were fundamentally different and it was evident in the way they held themselves: Rod held himself like a king but Kenny held himself like a true combatant. And he was. And so all the lesser warriors could do was obey.

The hyena backed off, lowering it's ears and head, and before Brandt even realized it, he felt his tail between his leg and his own ears pinned to his head. Kenny descended down those stairs and Brandt knew he should be running. But he had long learned not to, for it would only make things worse.

"Brandt," Kenny said slowly and Brandt shook with fear. "You told me that you had found the Jaegers."

Brandt whined. Every survival instinct he had was telling him to stay in his more powerful form and to run, run from these creatures who he could not defeat. But as the scent of fresh blood in the house was quickly fading and he could smell the wolves that Kenny had brought with him. Their fight outside was finished, and it seemed like they were the only two survivors. And now, now they were blocking his way out.

"The only Jaeger that is here," Kenny continued, "is Karla Jaeger." Brandt lowered himself to the ground. "She is _useless_. But with her dead now, we won't be able to _get_ to the children, not nearly as easily. Certainly not without drawing attention to ourselves."

Under that glare, and under the threat of all the fighters surrounding him, Brandt could only do one thing. He transformed back to his human form and he began to beg.

"I'm sorry, Sir," Brandt said, still curling in on himself, trying his best to hide the places most vulnerable to attack. "I didn't know the children wouldn't be there." Kenny stared him down with those iron gray eyes, and pure fear churned in Brandt's gut.

"Kill him," Kenny said finally.

"No!" Brandt yelled. The hyena only a few steps from him growled, and lowered its' head aggressively, stalking forward with its' teeth bared. Kenny walked down the stairs, moving much like the hyena did: dangerously. He strolled calmly behind the hyena backing Brandt into a corner. "You said you would forget everything!"

Kenny Ackerman didn't look back. He was done with the former fighter, he had nothing to say to that dead dog. The hyena would take care of it, and the wolf would help the hyena clean up, by his orders. The wolf would also pick up the corpse of the cougar and the team Reiss had sent. He met the other wolf at the who stood waiting just behind the door. The wolf was still in its' animal form and it was waiting for Kenny, who nodded at the gray wolf. Kenny transformed back into his Amur tiger form and led the wolf away from the Jaeger house.

..

Eren groaned, letting his head fall against the table with a thud. "I can't believe you all talked me into this!"

"Quiet, Eren," Mikasa said. "You need as much help as Daz, Franz and Mina, so let us help." She already had her notebooks and textbooks out on the table, showing off her neat notes. The exact opposite of his… well, as long as he was passing, which he _was_, no matter what Mikasa thought.

Daz laughed quietly, ducking his head lower. "Thanks for your help, again," he said to Mikasa who smiled at him.

"Don't thank me," Mikasa said, "it was Armin's idea." Armin's chin length blond hair swished slightly as he raised his head from Franz's and Hannah's notes to smile at the other library table.

"It's no problem Daz," he said cheerfully. "I'm happy to help out anyway I can." Daz smiled back at the small blond a little shakily, his nervous, almost Chihuahua-like disposition showing again.

"Nerds," Eren muttered under his breath. His sister simply rolled her eyes while Armin shook his head with a slight smile before turning back to Hannah and Franz.

"You really are a life saver, Armin," Hannah said. "We're both so grateful, aren't we Franz?" Her boyfriend startled and lifted his head from Armin's notes and his, blinking at the both of them.

"Of course!" he said happily. "Really though, it's great for you to put this study group together. Mina and I would be screwed without you."

Mina laughed lightly from her own library table. "We definitely would be," she said. "My coach is pissed at me, and I'd really hate to miss the next game."

"Same," Franz said, relief evident in his voice.

"It's no trouble, really," Armin said. "But we should get working if we actually want to do help you three."

"Right!" Franz said loudly, while Daz nodded quickly, and Mina smiled at the small blond and went back to hovering over her notes, along with the ones Mikasa and Armin had provided her.

Eren sighed again, prompting Mikasa to stare him down. "Here," she said, sliding him her notes on algebra. "Use these, you're getting a C minus in that class."

With raised eyebrows and wide eyes, Eren picked up them up. "You never let me look at your notes."

"I never let you look at the _answers_," Mikasa corrected firmly. "You've never asked me for my notes."

The voice that spoke out next was not a voice of any of the students in the little, thrown together study group of friends who wanted to help each other out. It came from just inside the library doors, and it was grim. "Eren? Mikasa?"

Six students looked towards of the teacher, Mr. Hannes, who stood in the doorway. "Mr. Hannes, what…" Hannah started to ask, but the kind girl trailed off when she saw the sad and pity on the teacher's face.

"Please come with me," he said solemnly.

..

Eren's head hung low as he held back the tears burning in his eyes. Mikasa just stared blankly at the building across the street. The two had been called away from the library and driven to the morgue to identify their mother's body.

She had been horribly mutated, and the coroner had ruled her death an animal attack. And at first Eren had been angry. How had she been attacked by an animal in a house? How was she _dead_?

Mikasa had silently stood in the doorway while her brother had raged. No matter what her last name was now, she was not Karla's daughter. She had not known Karla from her birth, and though she had loved Karla, she had not loved Karla like Eren did.

But the thought that had stuck in their minds the entire time as they saw their mother's body, talked to the coroners, and then as they waited downstairs for the Arlerts to pick them up, was _why_? _Why_ were they left without parents? Why had Mikasa's parents died? Why was Grisha Jaeger gone? _Why_ was the only parent they had left _gone_?

Eren was shaking slightly and Mikasa wished she could do something for her brother. Perhaps if she was a better person, like him, she would have given her red scarf to him. The red scarf that had been his first Christmas present to her. Karla had helped him wrap it. She should give it to him, to remind her how kind Karla was, and that she, his sister was still there for him but her hand had somehow, without her realizing it, clamped in a death grip around the very edge of the red scarf and she just didn't have the strength to remove it.

A shadow appeared over the two grieving teenagers, and Mikasa turned, her hand still clamped tight over her scarf, to see a tall blond man with blue eyes and abnormally large eyebrows, and who was wearing a simple suit. She just stared blankly up at him, and Eren didn't even move at all.

"Excuse me," the blond man asked, "are you Mikasa Ackerman?"

"Mikasa Jaeger," she replied quietly, reflexively correcting him from using her former surname. "Yes. That's me."

The blond nodded. "Of course. And that's your brother, Eren Jaeger, correct?"

Mikasa tensed slightly, tugging on the edge of her scarf as she sat up straighter. She turned towards the stranger, blocking Eren from his gaze. "Yes," she said curtly, forcing false strength into her voice.

"I am so sorry for your loss, Miss Jaeger," he said kindly. "My name is Erwin Smith."

"What do you want?" Mikasa asked. She was never in the mood for small talk but today her patience was nonexistent. She wasn't even sure how long she could keep the farce she was putting on up.

"I'm a private detective," Erwin Smith said, pulling a business card out of his jacket pocket. It looked like he had little time for small talk as well. "The police are always busy. If you want to call us for any reason, just give the name Mikasa Ackerman, and we will help you with whatever you need."

"My name is Mikasa Jaeger," she said shortly. "And why would we need you for anything? The police told us this was an animal attack."

At this, Mikasa glanced momentarily at Eren, to see if this conversation was affecting him any. But it didn't even look like her grieving adoptive brother had even noticed Erwin Smith's arrival.

"If you need us," Erwin Smith repeated slowly, "you can always call. Just mention your name."

He took Mikasa's slender hand and placed the card in it. He smiled softly, and maybe a little sadly before turning and walking away towards an old muscle car. It was a restored, but beaten up black Mustang. In the driver's seat was a man with black hair and silver sunglasses over his eyes. But even with his sunglasses, his gaze was intense enough to feel like it was burning into her. Mikasa stared back at him, but it was not her commonly used death glare. There was something about this man. _Something_.

The door of his Mustang slammed shut as Erwin Smith settled in the passenger seat. Mikasa startled and broke her gaze, but the other did not. He started that big, black car without looking away. It was only when he gripped his old car's wheel that he finally stopped staring and started driving away without a backwards glance.

Mikasa took a deep breath and her hand finally loosened slightly on her red scarf, and she realized her nails ached from the death grip she had assumed. She leaned her head back on the back of the seat, her shoulders shaking slightly. She was _tired_. That conversation had been so exhausting. She felt like she had just run ten miles, and right now she just wanted to sleep, and to forget everything that had happened today, if just for a few hours.

And as her eyesight began blurring with sleep, it looked like she would get her wish. The Arlerts' car pulled up and Armin jumped out while it was still moving, running towards them. Mikasa felt Eren stir beside her, probably having spotted their small blond friend. She saw no more, though, her eyes sliding closed.

..

Eren stared at the ceiling of his new bedroom, his eyes red and burning. Perhaps with tears or perhaps with sleep deprivation. It didn't really matter either way.

Armin and his grandfather were truly good people, just as Armin's parents were. They were in another continent, Eren forgot which one it was this month, building houses and educating children.

The Arlerts had been named Eren's and Mikasa's legal guardians until Grisha Jaeger returned. Everytime Eren even thought about that, he snorted softly to himself. He and Mikasa were both lucky that he had still been in shock when the lawyer had read them his mother's will because there was a very good chance he would have burst out laughing otherwise. As if that deadbeat asshole was ever coming back. Since the Arlerts were off helping people around the world, they were allowed to live with Abel Arlert, Armin's grandfather. He was extremely smart, just like the rest of his family, and worked as an English professor.

Mikasa, who had not spoken much before, did even less now. But she seemed fine. She went to school, did her homework, got good grades (as she always had), eaten all the meals Abel and Armin had cooked for them, and read, both for school and for pleasure.

He, though, he could not do what Mikasa had done. He could not go on like she had, like he was okay. His mother was _dead_. And his father was gone. And neither were ever coming back.

He loved his sister dearly, and he loved Armin, and his parents and Abel had always treated Eren like their own flesh and blood. But it wasn't the same. It could not be the same.

And so Eren decided to stay in his room, in the dark. His dark room was calm and quiet. No teachers politely but endlessly and impatiently asking for homework, or classmates seemingly forgetting his mother was even a human being as the days began to pass. Her funeral hadn't even happened yet and it was like most people thought that Karla Jaeger's death was something that happened years ago.

Eren found himself constantly angry at the people who failed to remember, or worse, didn't seem to care. And when he was out of his cool, dark room, anger bubbled up and out of him. He had shouted at teachers, insulted his friend Hannah, and gotten punched by his other friend, Franz, for insulting Hannah, his girlfriend. The principal had let him off with a warning, but Eren would have rather he had suspended him. That would have given him a reason to hide in his room on a Wednesday besides that he just didn't think going was a good idea.

Luckily, he wasn't forced into going, as his legal guardians were half way across the world, and the person currently looking out for him left at the crack of dawn to get to work.

Mikasa had tried to talk to him about his anger but that pretty much ended in him telling his sister to fuck off. He had later apologized but refused to reopen the conversation. After that, Mikasa had backed off but she still insisted in knowing where he went when he skipped school. He had agreed to that.

He held his phone up, ready to text his sister, when the anger rose. His sister wasn't his mother. His _mother_ was dead.

Eren threw the phone and jumped off his bed, not waiting to see where his phone landed. He back and forth across his room loudly, his breathing short and harsh. The calming darkness wasn't _working_. His anger just kept burning in his stomach, growing and growing. He had to get out.

Before he knew it, his hand was on the knob to the door of his room, and he was twisting it, half expecting it to break off and bounce across the floor with how much force he used.

He was down the stairs and out the front door in the blink of an eye, slamming it closed hard enough to shake the windows.

..

**Alright, and now you all have chapter two.**

**I want to mention that I have read chapter 62 of the manga, so yes, I know about Grisha. There's a reason that this is an AU.**

**I should be updating with chapter three soon. Please remember to give me all the comments/reviews.**

**Special thanks to Wolfgrowl for beta-ing and helping me come up with most of this in the first place. Go check out his work. Especially the I Can See Green fic. You're welcome in advance.**


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer: I do not own anything you recognize from the manga and/or anime called **_**Shingeki no Kyojin **_**or **_**Attack on Titan**_**. Anything you don't recognize is mine.**

..

How did he even get here?

That was the thought in Eren's mind as he sat in near complete stillness on the porch of his old house. The house his mother had died, _been killed_, in.

Attacked by animals. Attacked in her own house, by animals from the woods. The front door had been destroyed and the animals and dragged her, bloodied and dying all around the house.

The police didn't know how the animals had shattered the door so badly, they didn't know how they had even come up to the house in the first place. They knew nothing, and they were _useless_.

He shivered suddenly, on his old porch. The chill raced up his spine and goosebumps rose on his skin. Eren sucked in his breath, looking around. Towards the woods. His hair stood up on the back of his neck and his heart began to pick up speed.

Eren rose and walked stiffly down the stairs, stopping just at the bottom. The woods that were just outside his house, there was something. Something in there that made Eren feel like he had been doused in a bucket of cold water.

He should have run instead.

It came flying out of those woods, running so fast it looked like it's feet were not touching the ground, massive though it was. Eren tried to turn, to get away, but he couldn't, not before it reached him and not before it's jaws locked around Eren's left arm. It's razor sharp teeth tore through Eren's skin, though his flesh and he swore he felt them scrape across bone.

Eren let out a choked scream, reactively pushing on the huge animal head that had fastened it's teeth around his arm. Instead of releasing him, the animal just bit down hard and shook it's head, tearing the skin. Blood rolled down his arm, dripping onto the grass and pavement around the struggling pair.

Even as Eren sunk to his knees, the pain nearly blinding him, the animal didn't let go. It's grip only tightened as it begun to shake it's head more, ripping his flesh. More blood spilling from his arm, and a coldness settled across Eren. Animals, the same thing that had been his mother's killer, would be his too, it appeared.

The pain sharpened and peaked then, his skin _burning_ with agony, like it was being slowly peeled off. The weight and the pressure of the animal's bite was suddenly gone, though his torment continued.

Eren cracked open heavy eyes, his gaze blurred by tears. The animal that had attacked him, a huge dog, it looked like, had been thrown off him, shoved a few feet away. It was getting to it's feet and Eren could see it's muscles under it's coat. His heart was beating sluggishly, but he could swear it sped up when he saw it rise.

But then Eren looked up, at the person who had thrown the massive dog off of him. But it wasn't a person. It was another animal, a huge black panther. Eren had thought the dog was frightening but seeing that immense creature hovering over him was beyond horrifying.

The dog growled at the big cat, its lips pulling back from its sharp and bloody teeth. The black panther responded by baring its own huge teeth. The dog charged forward, its long tail tense and straight. It would have run over right over Eren to get to the massive black cat, but it didn't get the chance to. The black panther leaped over Eren's body, landing just in front of the tan dog and recovering from is long leap fast enough to wound the dog's shoulder with its huge paw.

The dog whimpered slightly but regained its composure quickly and it reared up, snapping at the black panther but it was too fast for the dog. It rose up onto its back legs too, its enormous paws and curved claws hitting the dog in the chest.

With a loud yelp, the dog fell back, hitting the ground with a dull thud. It quickly tried to push itself to its feet yet again but before it could completely, the black panthers powerful jaws tightened around its back leg. The dog howled in pain and wretched its leg out from black panther's jaws, the dog's blood splattering over the grass. Without a backward glance, the dog raced away, its injured leg dragging behind it, but doing little to slow its speed.

Eren had been frozen in place, bleeding slowly and breathing sluggishly where the dog had dropped him. The black panther looked back from the spot where it had sent the dog running, staring at Eren's prone body for a moment before it looked beyond him.

With far more effort than Eren had ever thought it would take, he turned his head to look where the black jaguar did. Another dog, this one white and smaller than the other one, was approaching him slowly. Eren squirmed slightly but all the tiny amount of energy he still had disappeared with that small movement. The black panther did not move to attack the white dog, and the dog kept coming towards him.

Eren let his eyes slide closed, again certain he was going to die. That was, until, he felt hot breath against his cheek, and he cracked one of his eyes open. The white dog hovered over him, its dark nose inches from his face. It didn't move a muscle for a few moments, but then the white dog rose up onto its hind legs, much like the tan dog had when it had fought the big, black cat. But the white dog didn't attack Eren. No, the white dog _changed_.

Into a human. A female human with short blonde hair and who also lacked clothes. She peered down at him, and Eren stared back without a sound. He didn't have the energy to make any sort of noise.

The woman looked away from him for a moment, glancing upward. Out of the corner of his eye, Eren saw the huge paws of the black panther inches away from his head. He probably should have been scared of the wild animal, but he was too tired. Too tired to move, to speak, to feel at this point. He just wanted to fade. And he began to as the woman said something quickly to the black panther before looking back down at Eren. Eren, who could have sworn that the black panther nodded in response to the women before his eyes decided to seal themselves shut.

..

His eyelids were heavy and they throbbed with dull pain as he pulled them open with an extreme amount of effort.

The room his was in was a sharp white that nearly blinded his already tired eyes. Eren flinched away, furrowing his eyebrows, and pushing his head back into the softness behind it. He was lying down, surrounded by warmth. A bed, and a very comfortable one.

Eren looked up and around him, his eyes slowly adjusting to the harsh white of the walls. He was hooked up to an IV bag, and his arm throbbed dully. Eren was no longer bleeding, but he did not want to pull back the covers from his arm, for he did not want to see the damage that the _animal_ had done.

Oh yes, Eren remembered every moment of the dog attack, the dog tearing into his arm, almost to the bone. The black panther charging the dog, striking it, making it bleed. Saving _him_. And then the other dog, the white one. The one who had changed into a human women, and the one who had spoken to the black panther like the wild animal knew what she was saying. And how the black panther then nodded like it had understood the words.

Muscles aching and head pounding, Eren lifted a nearly limp hand to his head and dug his palm into his brow. The attack played over and over again in his mind, and he wished it would just stop. He needed to think about where he was, what he was doing here and how to get _out_ of the strange place he knew nothing about.

He could guess that he wasn't in a hospital, although it did look like one. But it was too quiet, too obvious that there was no one around. That thought probably should have sent his heart racing again but honestly, he couldn't get more frightened than he had already been. It was like his body had modified itself, at least for the time being.

Eren was exhausted. He wasn't going anywhere for a while, and there was really no reason for him to be afraid anymore. It wasn't going to help him.

So, for now, he closed his eyes again and replayed the animal attack again, trying to figure out what had happened. How all of that was possible.

The other senses heightened when human's eyes were closed, as they relied so much on their sight. And with Eren's eyes closed, his sense of hearing sharpened so he could hear the soft, light footsteps heading towards him.

Eren tensed but kept his eyes closed, his breathing coming slightly faster than before. He tried to calm himself down, hoping for one of those movies scenes where the main character listened in to the bad guy, pretending to sleep and gained the upper hand.

As the door swung open, Eren suddenly remembered that, in the movies, when the heroic main character listened into the villain's conversation, the villain usually figured it out and proceeded to beat the crap out of the hero. _Fuck_.

It was a little late now and Eren, for whatever reason, kept his eyes tightly shut as the footsteps approached his bed. They came to a stop and Eren could tell the person was hovering over his bed, looking down on him.

Whoever it was let out a small, almost unnoticeable huff before turning away from Eren, and walking a few steps. He assumed she was checking out his IV bag.

While the person's back was turned, Eren peaked open his eyes as much as he dared. And when the person came into focus, it was everything he could do to not sit up as fast as he could.

It was the white dog, the woman, _the dog that had turned into the person_. She had taken him from the lawn of his house where he had been bleeding out, from that other dog's attack. She had gotten them both away from that black panther, she had brought him to wherever this was and she had stitched him up.

"Who are you," Eren spoke out, before he could stop himself. His voice was harsh and grating and Eren winced at the sound, but he stared determinedly at the blond woman.

She slowly turned to face him. She had a long face, a pointed chin, and her blond hair was cropped short, above her ears. Her eyes had bags under them, and Eren's cheeks began to redden as he remembered that he had seen this woman naked.

The woman smiled a tired but sincere smile. "My name is Nanaba, Eren."

How did she know his name? Why was he here? Who was she _really_? Where was he? Why had he been attacked, why had that black panther left them alone, where had that white dog gone? And what _was_ she?

Those were the questions Eren wanted to ask that woman, _Nanaba_, but all he could say in his rasping voice, his head lifted off the pillows, his body twisted to see her easier, was, "you were the dog." He almost immediately amended, "the white dog, you were the white dog."

Nanaba smiled again, this time wider and with something akin to smugness. "Yes," she said lightly. "Yes, I am."

..

The blood trail had left a clear scent to track and the dog hadn't made it far. It had made it into the forest, an impressive feat, considering the extent of the tan dog's leg injury. That animal had both impressive strength and survival instincts. And he could respect that.

The dog had also been clever heading straight to the woods while he made sure the others were safe. It had thought that the scents of the woods would mask its' own scent and the smell of its blood.

And he did have to admit, it worked fairly well. It was also a trick he himself had used before, but it did _not_ work completely. It would have had to do other things to totally eliminate its trail, and it had not.

It hadn't taken him long to pick up its spoor, and he had tracked it deep into the forest. He had first found the trail of blood it had left amongst the grasses and rocks on the forest floor. The scent was fading into the woodland, but the coppery smell of blood was still clear enough for him to track it for several hundred yards.

The forest was alive with sounds and other scents. Part of his instincts stirred deep into his gut, urging him to part from the trail and go after the other, easier to hunt prey lurking in the leaves and the trees.

But he had long since gotten used to ignoring those instincts and utilizing the ones' he needed at the time. Perhaps he would have to return to these woods though, for the prey animals were quite unaware. They probably hadn't seen a black jaguar roaming around before, and though they kept their distance, they weren't even close to being careful enough. He could catch half of the animals in the forest in a blink of an eye.

The dog would take longer to capture, but he would do it. It wasn't a question of would, it was a question of when.

As he tracked the big, tan dog further, the forest floor became damp under his paws, and that began to interfere even more with the trail of blood he was following, as it was slowly thinned out, and was being swallowed by the wet ground.

Luckily, though, the saturated ground meant a different way to track the tan dog: prints. The paws prints the large dog had left gave him a rather easy to follow path.

His large, streamline, black body slid over the moist forest floor, his wide, dark paws leaving almost no trace of his tracks. His whiskers twitched ever so slightly and his eyes narrowed as he was tracking by sight more than scent. The trail of blood was all but gone and the musky scent of the wet ground overtook the ruddy smell of the blood. But he still followed the tracks the tan dog had left.

His pricked dark, rounded ears flicked faintly as he picked up the sound of moving water. It was barely a whisper among the other, closer sounds of the forest, but he suspected that it was the reason the ground below his paws was wet.

The dog was heading straight towards the stream, probably trying to wash its' meager scent trail away completely in the water. It was also most likely after the water itself, trying to stay hydrated because of all the blood it had lost in their brief but devastating fight.

There was almost no wind on that day, and the humidity was high. The mugginess hid his scent well, and the lack of wind was extremely helpful too. Everything he was and in the forest gave him the edge over his carnivorous prey.

The murmur of the stream steadily grew louder as he prowled nearer to it. He lowered himself closer to the ground, his stomach barely inches from the ground, and his tail only centimeters. Every step he had taken before had been wary, but now they were all carefully calculated, each action weighed cautiously against others. The woodland seemed to swallow him, the low hanging foliage covering him almost like a blanket.

And the stream came into sight then, as did the end of the paw prints. They came to a stop inches from the gurgling stream, but he knew not to give up so soon. With all his senses on high alert, he crept forward, to the very edge of the cover the woods gave him and he looked over the creek. His eyes vigilantly picked apart the area surrounding it, looking for any sign, any clue. His nose and whiskers twitched, trying to pick up anything he could, but his eyes were the ones who actually did the work. A tiny piece of fur, tan and thin, clung to a branch of a small bush on the other side of the stream.

The dog had passed through the water, and it had washed its scent away. Unfortunately, though, those small hairs told him almost everything he needed to know. It had gone upstream to get away from him but also to drink all the water it needed to stay conscious.

With a flick of his black tail, he turned downstream, silently moving away from the dog's position. He needed to get behind it, to a place where it couldn't see him coming.

He crossed the stream noiselessly, and stalked upstream again, back to the place where the dog had crossed. He found the piece of hair, and followed the water logged but still there scent it gave off further up the river.

And _there_. There it was, the Tosa dog. It was loudly lapping up what seemed to be buckets of water from a wide part of the creek. With its' head lowered, it gave him the perfect access. His sharp eyes narrowed in on his targeted area and he crouched lower, shifting his weight to his back legs.

He pushed off, covering the area between the prey and him, the hunter, in two bounds, his toned muscles making the large space seem like a small step. The fast but near silent approached meant the large dog didn't even have time to turn its' head before he was upon him. He buried his sharp teeth into the back of the dog's head, between its' ears. His strong bite went through the dog's skull, clamping down on its' cranial cavity.

With a final twitch, the muscled, injured fighting dog went limp. And he dropped the dangerous animal at his feet without even a single scratch to show from all their confirmations. The death was as clean as a death could be and so was he.

He walked away from the body for a moment to drink some water from the same part of the stream the dog had. He shook himself once and stretched, lapping at his paws and cleaning his face.

Finishing this task, he picked up the dead dog's body by its throat and carried it away. He didn't bother hiding himself, like he had before, as he did so. Instead, he walked leisurely, his head (and the corpse clenched within his jaws) held high. His large paws still muffled the sounds, he did not worry about any noise he made. His prey was caught and his job was done.

His brisk and unworried walk lead him to the edge of the forest. At the treeline, he dropped the body, and walked out into a small, open clearing with an old, seemingly abandoned road just beyond it. There, a black muscle car was parked and the black panther strode up to it without fear.

He reared back on his hind legs, his dark fur fading to skin, his ears, snout and tail disappearing, and his six foot long body shrunk (and shrunk) down. Into a man. A naked man.

His other form was small, much smaller than the black jaguar's, but muscled all the same. His hair was as dark as its coat. He had pale skin littered with all kinds of scars and lidded, intense silver-grey eyes with dark circles under them.

The man opened his car door, reaching a long fingered hand in to pull out a white shirt and black sweatpants. He put them on unhurriedly, and, when he pulled the shirt over his head, reached back into the car again, this time grabbing a phone from inside.

He hit a button on the phone and waited for a moment. On the other side, someone picked up and the dark haired man spoke.

"It's Levi."

..

**Thank you for reading. All reviews/comments will be ****squealed and fangirled over****much appreciated. I'll have chapter four up soon. **

**And a big thank you to Wolfgrowl yet again. If you haven't checked out his stuff, do yourself a favor and go read it ****_all_****.**


	4. Chapter 4

"The hunt is complete," Levi continued, his eyes rested on the body where he had left it about half a dozen paces from his car. "I'll be bringing the corpse in."

On the other side of the call, sat a familiar blond man in a fairly comfortable desk chair behind a small but well kept desk. The phone he was speaking into still rested in its' cradle, the speakers crackling faintly with Levi's every word. His glass office door was closed, and locked from the look of it. "Good," Erwin Smith said, turning in his chair to look out the window. "But, if you can, dispose of the body yourself. Nanaba has arrived back here with Eren Jaeger."

"He will bring hell down on us if he finds out we have the boy," Levi said instead of asking how the teenager was, which Erwin obviously took as his way of agreeing.

Erwin's mouth cocked upward in a small smile. "That is what you wanted, correct? You were the one who said it was time to go on the offensive."

"Oh?" Levi said, his gray eyes narrowing and flashing slightly. "Is that what we're doing? Because we'll need a shitton more bodies if we are."

"And we'll get them," Erwin said. "In time, we will get them."

A few minutes ticked by before Levi spoke again. "Fine," he said, finally taking his eyes off the body. He looked up at the sky, towards the sun, like he had done one time a long time ago. "I'll trust you Erwin. But all of your _bodies_ better not be hot-headed, squealing kids."

Levi hung up this phone without giving Erwin a chance to respond, tossing it back into the car and shutting the door again. He shrugged out of his clothes in a well practiced and smooth maneuver, and changed back into his other form. He flicked his tail and strolled back to the carcass. Again, he lifted it by the throat so only its tail still touched the ground, and he carried it back into the forest in which it had died.

..

Her keys clattered softly as she dropped them on the granite counter of the unlit kitchen in the empty house.

Mikasa sighed then, rubbing her right temple with three fingers. She wondered, not for the first time, if it was common for kids her age to be so bone tired all the time. If it was normal for her to stay up all night, working on as much school work as she possibly could, before lying down on her bed, trying to sleep until her blinding headaches began, and then she would toss and turn all through the night, until the sun came up.

But like she did every day, Mikasa shook her head, trying to lose the memories of all the sleepless nights. It never worked. But she kept going. She had a little brother to take care of, after all. Two now, actually.

One, her newest little brother, was easy to look after. He was a nerd, as her other brother would say, and he liked his books and his studying very much. Mikasa had actually just dropped him off at his after school job as a tutor, which he enjoyed, to the surprise of Eren (and to herself, a little bit).

Eren, though, he was the exact opposite from her good little brother, Armin. He got angry, got into fights, argued and skipped school. He had skipped school today, as a matter of fact, to absolutely no one's surprise. The teachers had all just turned a blind eye and Mikasa didn't know what else she could do other than ask her brother to text her a couple times a day.

Usually he did, but not today. Today, he had ignored each and every text she had sent when she could. She had half expected him to be passed out in the living room in front of the TV when she got back, most likely with some drool and/or food on his face.

But he wasn't, and he hadn't answered her when she had called his name from the doorway either. Eren pouted, scowled, got red faced from anger, shouted, and occasionally cried but he never ignored her. He had probably gotten pissed at _something_ (it could be the air with that one, Mikasa thought) and stormed out of the house.

She knew her brother had come to resent her for trying to get back to normal after their mother had died. But she didn't know what else to do. After her biological parents had died, she hadn't spoke for over a year. She had her brother to look after this time around, and she didn't _want_ to be like that again. Mikasa was better now, and stronger. She would never be that fearful, silent little girl again. So she tried to get back to normal as best she could.

It wasn't working as well as she thought it would.

Mikasa checked her phone again, looking for any texts her hotheaded brother had sent. There were none, still. She had been concerned when he hadn't responded before, but now she was getting really worried now. As petulant as Eren could be, he had always responded to her before this.

She headed upstairs to his room then, to try to find some clue of where he had gone. The door was wide open, the light turned off, and the bed mussed up. Mikasa stepped inside slowly, almost as if she was waiting for something to jump out at her like in one of those cliche horror films.

Just as she got through the doorway, her foot hit something on the floor. Mikasa flipped the light switch to on and picked up the little mystery item.

It was a phone, Eren's phone. And the screen had a small cracked running through it, like he had dropped it… or thrown it. Luckily though, the phone still worked, and when Mikasa turned it on, it lit up with her many messages still displayed on the lock screen.

Thrown it. Knowing him, Eren had probably thrown it across the room in one of his surges of anger. It had cracked when it landed and he hadn't bothered to pick it up before storming out of the house in rage.

At what, she could not guess. What had ignited his ire could be anything and everything. Her little brother had never been Mr. Anger Management but it had become near explosive since their mother had died. In fact, Mikasa knew that after Eren had gotten into his most recent fight at school, Abel had started to consider getting him tested for intermittent explosive disorder.

Anything and everything was also what Eren could do after he got angry. Mikasa had no clue where he had gone or what he could be doing; after all, the last time he had flew into a rage, he had brutally insulted one of his closest friends and then had gotten in a fist fight with another one because of it. Eren could be in danger or hurt or lost or-

And before she knew it, her own phone was in her other hand, and she tried to decide who to call. Abel would be the logical choice. Or she could try to get in touch with Grisha again, but that wouldn't help Eren right now. And Abel was at work which wasn't too close.

The police would be the rational alternate but before she knew it, she was dialing and it wasn't 911.

How the card had gotten in her hand then, or how it had even been in her pockets without her noticing the entire time, was something Mikasa would never figure out. But it was the card that Erwin Smith had given to her, and she had dialed the number it displayed. The number to the Survey Corps Private Investigator Offices.

The phone rang three times before someone picked it up on the other line. "Survey Corps PI Offices," a baritone voice answered. "How may I help you?"

"I need help finding my brother," Mikasa said. "My name is Mikasa Jae- Ackerman."

There was a brief beat of silence on the other line before the man spoke again. "Hello Miss Ackerman," he said politely. "My name is Mike Zacharius. You said you needed help with your brother?"

"Yes," Mikasa said, a little shakily.

"Alright," Mike Zacharius said. "Please come by the Offices at about 7:30. We will talk to you about your brother then."

"But that's not soon enough!" Mikasa said loudly. "I was promised any help I needed if I called this number!"

"We will help," Mike Zacharius said, "at 7:30. Have a nice day."

There was a soft click that made Mikasa flinch slightly as the man hung up the phone. She pulled the phone away from her ear and clenched it hard in her hand, hard enough that she was sure it would later leave a mark. Her other had still had a loose grip on her brothers phone, and the business card Erwin Smith had given her. She calmly set both her phone and her brother's down on her brother's desk beside his door.

Mikasa kept the card in her hands, though, reading it over again. She closed her eyes for a moment before slowly ripping it in half. She took the two ripped pieces and tore them again and again and again until the tiny shreds of paper still left slipped through her fingers onto her brother's floor.

With a deep breath to control the anger she could feel rising in her stomach, she picked up the two phones again, tucking hers into her pocket and keeping Eren's in her left hand. She took another soothing breath before leaving her brother's room and descending down the stairs, and out of the house.

Nobody was there for her brother but she would be. She would find him and protect him always.

And so she found her keys and drove. She drove and drove in her simple, old car, trying to find that wayward brother of hers. She went to every spot she could think to look of, even checking the library as a last resort. But she came up empty handed at 6:00. Abel would not be back until at least 8 and Armin was still busy. If she had not yet found her little brother… she would go to the Survey Corps offices. She was not too prideful to ask for help, even if the help came from lying scumbags.

Pain pounded in her skull again, and sometimes her vision blurred just slightly but she ignored it. She ignored everything, and she would continue to until she was sure her brother, her last family member, was safe.

And that was when it hit her. She knew where her brother was. It was a place she had returned to many a time, but a place that he had refused to even go near to. But now he had.

The old house.

She broke several speed limits on her way there, she was sure. But she didn't _care_. It was almost 6:30 now and her brother had been out there for who knew how long. She had to get to him, and had to get him back safely.

When she pulled up in front of their old house though, she was surprised to see that Eren wasn't there, not on the porch. How he had gotten in the boarded up house, she didn't know. But it was Eren and he was capable of anything if he wanted it badly enough.

She flew out of the car, her keys clanging together harshly in her hand and she ran up to the house.

As always, when she went to that house, her heart began to thud in her chest and the pain in her head increased. The first time she had visited after her second mother had died, tears had pricked at the corners of her eyes.

But this time Mikasa held herself together. She would not let any pain hinder at all her until she found Eren and made sure he was okay.

When she reached the porch steps, though, was when she began to get confused. She slowed to a stop at the foot of them, and looked up at her former front doorway. It was still boarded shut, without an opening in sight, as were the windows.

Was her brother _not_ here? But… but no, that was impossible. He had to be here, he _had_ to be, because there was no where left that he could have gone.

Her skin tingled then, and hair rose all over her body. A sense of dread swept over her like a wave, and once again tears burned in her eyes.

Mikasa looked down at her feet, her eyes wide and watery. The grass around her feet was soaked in blood.

Again, she moved too fast for her to even remember moving at all. She held her already dialed and ringing phone up to her ear with a shaking hand, the other clenched tight into a fist.

"Survey Corps Private Investigator-"

"Blood," Mikasa said shakily before _Mike Zacharius_ could finish answering the phone. "There's blood here, at our old house. It's my brother's, I know it."

"Miss Ackerman," Mike Zacharius said calmly. "Please calm down and come to our offices immediately."

Mikasa stopped… well everything for a moment. Stopped talking, stopped blinking, even stopped breathing, just for a moment. Her heartbeat vibrated through her body as she stood completely still and it calmed her.

"You… you said that I had to wait until 7:30," she said, keeping her voice as steady as she possibly could, so there was only a tremble.

"Circumstances have changed," said Mike Zacharius.

..

With a gasp, his eyes flew wide open and what felt like a waterfall of memories poured through his head, complete with the pressure to leave him with a near blinding headache. But as painful as the headache was, it was also brief and it disappeared in mere minutes.

That was when he saw _her_. Nanaba, she had called herself. The white dog. She was sitting at a small desk not far off, typing away at a computer. She had not turned around when he had let out the gasp, but surely she must have heard it.

"Hey!" Eren called out, his throat aching slightly from his shout. Nanaba's typing stopped and this time she turned around in her swivel chair to look at him. She smiled at him, just like she had before, and began to speak.

But Eren cut her off before she could say anything. "Who the hell are you _really_?" Eren demanded, sitting up as best he could, Nanaba's eyes immediately darting to his arm to check his IV. "And where the _fuck_ am I?"

"Stay calm, Eren," Nanaba said instead of _answering_ any of his questions. "You may feel better right now, but you are still in a precarious situation. You almost-"

"I don't _care_!" Eren yelled. "Just tell me where I am and _why_ I'm here! And what you are!"

Nanaba's eyebrows pressed together, and her lips turned downwards just slightly. "Eren-"

The door slammed open with a bang just then, stopping whatever Nanaba was going to say in its tracks. Eren felt his face flushing red with anger, and he balled his hands into tight fists, ignoring the pain that arced up his left arm.

He glared turned to glare at the person who had slammed open the door, who had interrupted Nanaba just as she was about to give him _answers_.

It was a short, dark haired man, and, for some reason, Eren's mouth closed with a snap when he saw him and he froze for a minute. His hot glare faded in angered heat to just a wide eyed stare. Behind the short man walked in another, _much_ taller one, but Eren didn't even pay him an ounce of attention.

"Levi," Nanaba said to the dark haired man. "Don't slam the doors, I've told you that."

_Levi_ was the short man's name. _Levi_ who said something in response to Nanaba's scolding that was lost to Eren's ears as he continued to look unblinkingly at this man with the oddest sense of knowing.

It was only when his eyes began to burn did Eren blink again, and sound was restored to his ears.

"-rarely come to visit me over here, after all," Nanaba was saying, with her own eyes firmly fixed on Levi's. Finally, though, Eren was able to look away from the short man, and truly see the tall man he had come in with. And he wasn't just tall, he was _huge_. He towered over a foot taller than Levi, and their height difference was almost comical.

Levi had leaned back against the closest wall to him, his arms crossed over his chest as he spoke to Nanaba. "Hanji's running around shrieking like a manic again," he explained in a bored tone. "Moblit's trying to get her under control, but the girl is coming soon so everyone knows that's a lost cause."

"Ah, so you both decided to huddle and hide in here," Nanaba said with small, but obvious amusement in her voice.

"It was a strategic move," the tall man said and Nanaba lowered her head with a soft chuckle.

"Of course it was Mike, of course it was," she said. "But she is coming here, really?"

"Yes," Mike, the tall man, said in his deep voice. "She called not too long ago asking if she could. She even introduced herself as an Ackerman."

And that was when Eren sat up straight in the bed he was in, any pain from his arm dulled by sudden panic.

"Ackerman?" he asked sharply. "Are you talking about Mikasa Ackerman? My _sister_?"

Mike and Nanaba glanced over at him almost as if they had forgotten he was there, but Levi just looked at him with sharp silver-grey eyes. "That's right," he said as apathetically as before.

"_What do you want with her_?" Eren said, his voice lowering to almost a growl in his hostility. It was bad enough these _people_ had him, but his sister too? _No_.

Levi looked over him with the same blank look on his face that was beginning to make Eren's blood boil. He then turned that gaze back to Nanaba. "He's not a very grateful brat, is he now?"

Eren almost hurt his neck with how fast he turned it to catch Nanaba's reaction, which was a twitch of the lips and a silent shrugged. His anger spiked again and he opened his mouth to bark out another question but Levi spoke before he could.

"You're at the Survey Corps building," the dark haired man said. "Nanaba here just saved your life. If we hadn't taken you back here, you would have bled to death on your front lawn. And your sister called us. She wanted our help finding _you_, so we invited her down here. Feel free to thank the woman who saved you any moment now."

Eren opened his mouth and snapped it closed once again. He continued fish-like action more than he cared to admit before he ducked his head down just slightly. "Thank you," he muttered reluctantly but sincerely enough with a surreptitious glare at Levi.

Levi either didn't see or simply ignored Eren's glare, but Nanaba replied to his thanks with another gracious smile and a simple "you're welcome."

"Besides," she went on to say, "it's really Levi you should be thanking."

He blinked before turning to look at the stoic man who was now staring him down again. Breaking away from that captivating gaze was hard, but Eren managed to look back at Nanaba. "Why?" he asked.

Nanaba glanced between the two of them, "He was the one who really saved your life. I would have never gotten to you if he hadn't been there."

This time in his infinite wisdom, Eren resisted the urge to look over at Levi, his apparent _savior_, for he knew he would get caught up in that mesmerising stare yet again. Instead, he kept his gaze firmly fixed on Nanaba. "What do you mean?" he said, hoping to get the answers she would have provided before Levi and Mike had turned up.

Nanaba frowned just ever so slightly at him. "You really don't know," she said slowly, almost worriedly.

_Buzz buzz buzz_ went Mike's pocket before Eren could ask anymore of the short haired blonde woman and if that didn't frustrate him more than any of the extremely frustrating things that had already happened today. Nanaba and Levi both seem to snap to attention, meaning Nanaba looked over at Mike as he answered the phone with what seemed to be his usual calm intensity while Levi just glanced over at him with the same uninterested look that appeared to be permanently engraved on his face.

Mike didn't say a word into the phone, and he pulled it away from his ear mere moments after he had first answered it. Whoever was on the other side of the call obviously had only one thing clear in their mind and they had gotten their point across in the quickest manner possible.

"Erwin wants us with him," Mike said to both Levi and Nanaba, sliding his phone back into his pocket. Levi gave a short, sharp nodded and turned without another word, walking briskly out the door, exiting the room as bluntly as he had entered it. As the door swung shut behind him, Mike turned to Nanaba, and Eren dealt with his odd sense of… loss, perhaps? How utterly bizarre and _extremely _unsettling.

"Are you coming?" the still hovering Mike was asking Nanaba as Eren shoved down the unexpected feeling.

Nanaba smiled kindly at the waiting tall man. "Go on ahead," she said. "I'll be right behind you."

Mike left with a nod of his own, and the strange feeling left as suddenly as it came to be replaced by the fiery emotion of pure teenage annoyance. "Hey!" Eren said as Nanaba turned back to her desk when the door closed with Mike on the other side of it. "Where are you all going? Are you going to see my sister? Is she here? I want to see her!"

"Eren," Nanaba said slowly, turning to face him with the same express lots of his teachers wore, the one that made him feel like he was dumb. Eren curled his hands into fists again at her patronizing. "You need rest. Like I told you, you're stable now but that can easily change. You've already moved around too much."

"No," Eren said even as he began to feel the dull but harsh pain creepy back into… well, into his entire body now that whatever sort of anger fueled adrenaline rush had gone with Mike and Levi.

"Rest, Eren," Nanaba said soothingly, stepping towards his bed and reaching for his arm. Into it, she inserted the needle of a syringe (which, thankfully enough, barely stung. He didn't need anymore pain racing through his body) and pushed down the plunger.

"What's that?" Eren asked, and he would have tried to jerk his arm away if all of his energy hadn't just been sapped because of the wave of painful discomfort.

Nanaba removed the needle from his arm, and pressed a tiny bandaid over the spot where she had pushed it in. "Something to help you relax," she replied.

And it did indeed do just that. Eren felt any and all tenseness in his muscles fade to nothing, and his eyelids began to feel heavy. His anger and frustration started to fall away and a sleepiness swept over him. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew that he still should be wary, that he still didn't know these people, and that this _stranger_ had just drugged him with something that made him completely and utterly pliant.

But instead he just thought of those captivating silver-grey eyes and rather than feeling his irritation grow like it had before, he felt an even more intense wave of calmness sweep over him, curling around him like a warm blanket.

From the corner of drooping eyes, he saw Nanaba pick something up from her desk and then head to the door. "Wait," he called out drowsily. She stopped and turned sideways to look at his prone body. "What," he said, feeling like his mouth had been stuffed with cotton, "what did you mean? By," his jaws cracked open in a wide yawn, "thanking Levi?"

His broken sentence probably didn't make much sense, but Nanaba managed to understand. "You should remember," she said. "He saved you back at your old house."

"N_o-o-o_," Eren murmured. He struggled to keep his eyes open and his eyelids fluttered almost uncontrollably as he did. "I," he said, in barely a whisper, "I was saved by… by a black _panther_."

And Eren's fight against his body was lost then as his eyelids dropped completely. But just before he faded into the dark rest that await him, he heard Nanaba's quiet, drowned out by his own tiredness, response.

"Exactly."

..

**Sorry it took so long everyone! But here's chapter four.**

**Thanks again to Wolfgrowl for beta reading. **

**Please remember to review!**


	5. Chapter 5

Mikasa inhaled deeply as she stepped out of her car and onto the cement sidewalk. When she ducked out of the car completely, she directly faced the simple, not very tall but still meticulous, and professional looking building of the Survey Corps Private Investigators.

Everything about that building said they weren't a big corporation but that they _were _hard working and good at what they did.

And that made what was surely Mikasa's extremely high blood pressure lower. A bit. They still had her brother, after all, and she was about to walk right into whatever situation this was without a second thought.

But still, she did it. All for Eren, all for her family. And so she walked through the building's double doors, ready and willing to face whatever met her as long as she got her brother back, alive and well, by the end of it.

The doors lead into a lobby where Mikasa was met by a blond man behind a desk. He had bags under his eyes, and though he did not smile at her, he managed to give off a welcoming sort of feeling.

"Hello," he said politely, and Mikasa quickly thought back to _Mike Zacharius_, who had been less than helpful. "How can I help you?"

"My name is Mikasa Jaeger- Ackerman," she said, her former surname leaving a bad taste on her tongue. "Mikasa Ackerman. I called earlier, and I was told that I have an appointment."

And _now_ the man behind the desk smiled at her. "Ah yes," he said, waving her forward. "Hang on a moment, I'll let Mr. Smith know you're here."

He picked up the phone and pressed one of its buttons. When the other person picked up, he did just what he said, informing them of her arrival at Survey Corps. He nodded and agreed with whatever the other person told him and placed the phone back down in its cradle.

"Mr. Smith will be down to get you in a few moments," the blond man said kindly. He gestured to a seat beside his desk. "Feel free to sit and wait for him."

Mikasa placed her indecisiveness and worry aside and chose to simply sit in the chair he had offered. Ungracefully, especially for her, she flopped down into the seat and folded her arms tightly to her chest. As she did, she caught that the man at the desk, whose name she still didn't know, looking at her with what appeared to be a faint glimmer of amusement.

Before she could ask after that odd look on his face, she heard soft footsteps echoing behind her on the stairs. Mikasa looked up and towards the stairs, and there _he_ was.

Erwin Smith, looking just the same as he had when he had first approached her on the day of Karla Jaeger's death. She even wondered for a moment if he was wearing the same suit.

He descended down the stairs unhurriedly, but with purpose and he kept his eyes firmly fixed on her as he did. She could feel him sizing her up, reading her body language and trying to figure out what exactly she was thinking at that moment. It was something she did often.

When he finally hit the floor, he turned his gaze to the man at the desk. "Thank you, Erd," he said politely and with a tiny smile. "I'll take it from here."

Erd nodded and went back to typing away on his computer. Mikasa rose then, not waiting for Erwin to call her name, to control her movement. Erwin smiled at her though, like he had expected that from her. That made her frown. "It's good to see you again, Miss Ackerman," he said. "Welcome to Survey Corps. Please follow me."

And then Erwin Smith headed back upstairs without a backwards glance. Erd looked up from his computer with another tired smile. "Have a nice day," he said.

Neither of them thought she wouldn't follow Smith, she realized, and she felt defiance rising in her. She wondered what would happen if she just stayed where she was and just demanded that Erwin tell her where her brother was right there in the lobby.

If it wasn't for her brother, Mikasa would have, too. But it was, and for that, Mikasa would make any sacrifice. Even her pride. So she followed the arrogant man and his gigantic eyebrows up those stairs and through the halls of the Survey Corps building until they arrived at a conference room.

Erwin Smith held the door open of the room open for her with what could have been a charming smile; Mikasa didn't really know, nor did she really care. She just made the monumental effort to keep from sighing or rolling her eyes (or both) and stepped inside.

In long, dark room was a long, dark table at which a woman with a messy, oily, dark red hair pulled back into a ponytail sat. The woman's large glasses were slipping down her nose and she poured over a huge mess of papers that were scattered all over the table in front of her.

When Erwin Smith closed the door behind them, the woman's head snapped up, and Mikasa could swear her eyes grew five times about larger.

She leaped up with the loudest squeal Mikasa had ever heard (and one of Mikasa's closest friends was Hannah, who squealed at whatever she thought was cute, which was basically _everything_) and shot to her feet, propelling the chair she had been sitting in back and onto the floor with a loud _thump _and knocking almost all the papers she had been looking at all over the floor. "You're HERE," the woman shouted with excitement enough to make a classroom full of six year olds jealous.

Mikasa stood frozen in the face of the other woman's enthusiasm but the rest of the world did not. Another door, on the other side of the conference room opened and in walked a brown haired man with a glass of something in his hands.

"Here, Miss Hanji," he said with a definite note of exhaustion in his voice, as he tried to give the glass to the auburn haired woman. He appeared to not even notice either Erwin or Mikasa.

That was, until "Miss Hanji" grabbed his arm, making him stumble and nearly spill the glass he was carrying.

"_Look Moblit_," Miss Hanji said in her high pitched coo. "She's _here!_"

And the brown haired man, Moblit, looked over at Mikasa. Unlike Erd down at the welcome desk, who had looked a little sleepy, he looked bone-tired, like he was about to fall down at any moment.

But still he smiled at her welcomingly and Mikasa had to wonder how such kind people had ended up working for creepy freaks like Erwin Smith and _Miss_ Hanji.

"It's nice to finally meet you, Miss Ackerman," Moblit said.

"Yes, _yes_," Hanji said, actually bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet now. Her bug-like eyes had to be twice the size of a normal person's and they kept raking over Mikasa's body, taking in every little detail. Her fingers were twitching and her hands were shaking uncontrollably like she wanted to _touch_.

Mikasa would shy away from this thoroughly peculiar and eccentric woman if it hadn't meant backing down in front of Erwin Smith, who was standing only a few steps behind her, watching as if this was wholly normal and wasn't a test like she _knew_ it was.

Instead, she steeled herself, doing her best to ignore the salivating woman who was now being almost pushed back down into her seat by Moblit who had picked it up and straightened it out.

After getting Miss Hanji safely back in her chair, Moblit took the hand that was currently not wiping _drool, actual drool_ off her chin, and placed the cup he had been carrying into it, making sure her fingers were completely wrapped around it before letting it go. And _then_ he knelt and picked up all of her spilled papers while _Miss Hanji_ just stared and stared and _stared_ at Mikasa.

And just like it was completely normal, Erwin stepped around Mikasa and took a seat at the end of the table closer to them. "Please sit, Mikasa."

Mikasa wondered just when they had gotten to first name terms. But still, for Eren, she took a seat. She chose the chair as far away as she could get from Erwin _and_ Hanji, which sat her right smack in the middle of both of them. Perhaps not her best idea.

By then, Moblit had finished picking up Hanji's papers and had placed them in a pile next to her before taking his own seat to Hanji's right.

"Mikasa," Erwin said then and Mikasa looked at him with the blankest possible expression on her face. "These are my associates, Hanji Zoe and her assistant, Moblit Berner."

Mikasa turned to Hanji and Moblit, Hanji wearing a slightly demented smile and Moblit wearing a kind one. She looked directly at Moblit when she said, "it's nice to meet you. My name is Mikasa Jaeger."

Hanji leaned forward with a gleam in her bulging eyes. "Oh _really_?" she said, with far more excitement than someone should have over a simple introduction.

"_Yes_," Mikasa said firmly. Which caused Hanji to lean back again and _finally_ take her eyes off of her. They went to Erwin instead, who looked back with a certainty and calmness that unnerved Mikasa.

"Of course, of _course_," Hanji said happily, returning her gaze once more to Mikasa. "Tell us more about yourself, Mikasa!"

Mikasa blinked a few times, taken aback by Hanji's question. But then she drew her mouth in a pale, thin line, no longer in the mood to hide any annoyance. "Well, I'm here to find my _brother_," she said sharply, snapping her head back to Erwin's. "Who you _said_ you'd help me find."

Erwin smiled a smile that was probably supposed to pacify her. Instead, it made her annoyance grow. "We will help you, as we promised," he said. "We're just waiting for a few of our other associates. Don't worry," he continued before Mikasa could get any more words out of her open mouth, "they should be here soon."

She glared him down and began to prepare her next argument, but before she could, the door was flung open. In walked a short man, a man she recognized even though she had barely caught a glimpse of him before hand. That heavy stare was not something easily forgotten.

It was the man who had driven that black car, who had been there with Erwin Smith when he had spoken to her the first time, on the day Karla Jaeger had died.

Behind him was another man, a tall one. Taller than Erwin Smith, from what Mikasa could see.

"These," Erwin Smith was saying, "are our other colleagues, Mike Zacharias and Levi." Levi nodded at her but did not stare like last time, or do anything too freakish like Hanji had as he went to take a seat. Though she did think his lack of a last name was odd.

Mike Zacharias, on the other hand, inhaled deeply, looking at her all the while. If she hadn't been unable to take her eyes off the huge, sniffing, staring man, she would have seen Levi roll his eyes from his seat by Erwin's left. But Mike Zacharius (the one she had spoken to on the phone, she realized), finally took a seat on Erwin's right.

"Nanaba will be here in a bit," Mike said. "We should start now, she said."

Without missing a beat, Erwin turned back to Mikasa. "You want us to find your brother." Mikasa couldn't decide whether she wanted to roll her eyes or bang her fists on the table. Either way, she just froze her body in place, waiting for him to continue. "We already know where he is."

The back of her knees hit the edge of her chair with the force to send the chair sliding backward a good several inches.

"Take me to him," she demanded. "Take me to my brother."

"Calm your shit." Those words came from Levi. He looked at her intently, like he was staring her down, and it was working. She felt so compelled to follow his order and just relax.

What had her hackles rising again was when Erwin spoke up. "Please sit," was all he said but it was enough to get her blood pressure up.

"No," she said. "I want to see my brother. Now."

Hanji piped up next. "He's safe, don't worry," she said, spitting out her words so fast it was a miracle that her tongue didn't get tangled up. "He's sleeping right now, but you can see him as soon as you answer a few of our questions."

At this, Mikasa took a step back. _Sleeping_? What did that mean? Was he _actually_ asleep? Or…

The door swung open. A woman with short blonde hair stood in the doorway. "You're all scaring her, aren't you," she said. It wasn't even a question. She crossed her arms and stared them all down with sharp blue eyes.

"You've hit the nail on the head, Nanaba," someone else said from the same doorway the blonde woman, Nanaba, stood in. A pair of golden brown eyes and a shock of red hair popped up just behind her. "Look at all her."

Nanaba nodded and then smiled at Mikasa. Her smile was twice as sincere as any as she had seen here before and it surprised her. "I'm a doctor, Miss Ackerman," she said. "And I promise you that your brother is okay. He was injured in front of your old house, and he could have died of blood loss if Levi hadn't found him and brought him to me." Mikasa started in slight surprise and looked over at Levi. "He's stable now, and he's resting. If you could answer Erwin's questions, we could take you to see him right after."

For some reason, Nanaba inspired her trust, like Levi had. She was not intrigued by her, like with him, but Mikasa did think she was being honest. But still, she hesitated.

"Please," the shorter woman said, "you can trust us, Miss Ackerman. We are trying to help you."

"My name is Mikasa Jaeger," she said harshly. The shorter woman frowned at her.

"Not to us," Levi said without batting an eye. "And not to the people who attacked Eren."

Mikasa turned to him. "You _know_ who attacked him?" she asked.

This time, Erwin spoke up. "We do. We've been tracking them for years. And now they're after you and your brother."

"After _us_?" Mikasa asked. "Why? Who are these people?"

A short silence followed her questions. Erwin was looking at Mikasa with his calculating blue eyes, like he was trying to puzzle something out. Mikasa was not altogether pleased with being appraised like a piece of meat but before she could make her displeasure known, Hanji piped up again.

"What do you know about your father?" she asked curiously, leaning over the table. "Scott Ackerman, I mean."

Mikasa frowned over at Hanji in confusion. "My father? What does he have to do with any of this?"

"Please answer," Erwin said. Mikasa turned her head back to him with a glare, but did as he asked.

"My _father_," she said slowly, as one would do if they believed they were talking to someone who was a bit dim, "was killed years ago. With my mother."

"And what about Grisha Jaeger?" Erwin asked, obviously not picking up on Mikasa's irritation.

She sighed softly and shook her head slightly. "He was friends with my parents," Mikasa said, not even bothering to question him this time. "They made him and his wife, Karla my legal guardians when they died. Turns out my parents made a mistake with him. He left me and his family barely a year later. And now Karla is dead. And my brother has no one but me. I'd like to see him now."

Mikasa looked to Nanaba, the doctor, as she said that. Nanaba, in turn, looked to Erwin, who nodded.

"We can continue this after you make sure he's okay," Erwin said.

Nanaba smiled happily down at Mikasa who looked relieved. "Follow me, please, Miss Ackerman."

This time, Mikasa didn't even bother to correct her.

..

When the door swung closed behind Mikasa and Nanaba, another bout of silence took hold of the room.

"Does she even know anything?" the short woman with red hair asked finally.

"It doesn't matter, Petra," Levi said. "He's still going to want her and the boy."

Mike nodded shortly. "We have to keep them safe."

"They will be safer if they learn how to transform," Moblit spoke up.

"YES," Hanji cheered from beside her assistant.

Petra at the other red head with amusement before taking a seat beside her. "They actually have to know what that means first," she reminded Hanji. "How are we going to tell them?"

"Fast," was Levi response.

"Agreed," Mike said. "We have proof."

"Fantastic idea, Mike!" Hanji squealed. "We show them our transformations!" She turned to Erwin so quickly it was no small miracle her head didn't spin off. "And what about Eren's blood? When can I get my hands on that?"

Levi rolled his eyes.

"Soon," Erwin promised the hyped up red head. Before Hanji could jump for joy, though, he continued. "Wait until he's out of the hospital though. I'm sure he's already lost enough blood."

"Fine, fine," Hanji pouted.

"Perhaps," Erwin suggested, "Levi could provide you with another sample."

Again, the woman turned in her chair at dangerous speeds to look hopefully at the stoic man. Levi held her excited gaze for a few moments before shrugging.

"If you want," he said dully.

"Yay!" Hanji shrieked. "Saliva this time, okay?"

After they had all reassured the scientist that she was in fact getting her newest sample of bodily fluids, Levi turned back to the rest of the group.

"We need to focus now," he said, ignoring Hanji's babbling about all the new expirments she would try. "We have Eren Jaeger. He's at least fourth on their most wanted list. And Mikasa Ackerman is number one and she's not leaving her brother. If they discover we have them, they will tear the city to shreds trying to get to them."

"We've hidden them well," Erwin said. "Others are working to keep them safe too."

"Ah yes," Hanji said, finally pulled out of her scientific haze. "Your secret connections. Are we lowly associates ever going to get to meet them?"

Erwin glanced outside the window. "I imagine you will soon."

..

It was hard not to shiver in this place. It was dark and it was cold. And the most dangerous man he had ever known was standing in front of him.

"Sit," Kenny Ackerman said harshly from behind his desk. He followed Kenny's order immediately, nearly collapsing into the hard metal chair.

Kenny stared at him with his gray eyes that were colder than ice or winter wind. And so he shivered again.

"How is the-"

Panicked, he spoke up before Kenny could even finish his question. "The search is going fine, sir! I promise I'll have more for you soon."

"-transformation," Kenny continued like he hadn't even interrupted him. "Is it still giving you trouble?"

He stared at Kenny for a few seconds in shock. Kenny had never bothered to ask about that before…

With a start, he remembered that Kenny didn't like being looked at straight on for too long. None of these people did. He ducked his head and looked around the room, trying to find something to pin his eyes on.

"It's, uh, improving, s-sir," he said, fidgeting slightly in his uncomfortable seat. "There are still a few, um, issues. But, ah, I'm sure they'll go away soon!"

He raised his eyes, but not his head, to looked up at Kenny again then, trying to gauge his reaction. He didn't know why he even bothered. Never before had he been able to read Kenny, and this time was no different.

"Good," Kenny said and he jolted in surprise. "We'll need it soon."

It took everything he had to keep his head down. "You'll _what_?"

"There's a war coming," Kenny said. "And when you fight a war, you need fighters."

He frowned at that. "I'm not one of your fighters," he said. And it was true. He had no longing for battle, like they did. "That wasn't our deal."

"You wanted power," Kenny said. "You wanted to be greater than your old colleagues." He tensed at that. "Those are the requests you came to me with. And I granted you both of your wishes. Are you not going to repay me?"

"I _am_ repaying you," he said even though a little voice was telling him to stop, asking him why he would try to argue with Kenny fucking Ackerman. "I'm doing exactly what you wanted me to do."

"And now I'm asking you to do something else." Kenny planted the palm of his hands on his desk and leaned forward so that he still loomed over him but also so that Kenny could look him in the eye. He could see the powerful and taut muscles underneath Kenny's loose shirt, and once again he shivered in fear. "Are you going to refuse me?" Kenny asked.

Wordlessly, he shook his head.

Kenny smiled his wild and dangerous smile that always made him more fearful of anything Kenny did. "Good," he said as he finally took a seat behind his desk. "You'll do well as one of my fighters. I'm glad to have you completely on board, Nile."

..

Mikasa could easily tell when she was getting away from the business side of the building and into medical part. The dark gray carpet was replaced with light gray and white tile, and the walls became a sterile white color too.

"This is the infirmary," Nanaba told her, looking over her shoulder. "And Eren is sleeping peacefully down the hall."

Mikasa breathed in shallowly. "What happened to him?"

Nanaba looked at her carefully before answering. "He lost a lot of blood from a wound on his arm," she said with a very professional air. "The wound was a bite wound from a type of large dog with powerful jaw strength. It locked around his arm and bit down to the bone. As a matter of fact, Eren was lucky the bone wasn't damaged."

Mikasa sucked in a heavy breath like something was sitting on her chest. "An animal attack?" She felt her body freeze up, and her shoulder hit the wall closest to her so hard that she could already feel the bruising. So _many_ animal attacks, there were so many. _How _many more of those rabid creatures would hurt her family?

"-asa? Mika-? _Mikasa_?" Nanaba. That was Nanaba. The blonde woman was standing in front of her, looking her over with concerned eyes. "Mikasa, are you alright?" she asked in a calming voice.

Mikasa stared into those steady blue eyes, and she took a deep breath. "Yes," she said. "Yes, I am. Now, please, can I see my brother."

Nanaba hesitated a moment before nodding. "Follow me," she said, before leading her into the room.

The room, to anyone else, did not look to be anything special. But to Mikasa, it was heartbreaking. Eren was so still and he looked so limp that it almost appeared that he was dead. And Mikasa didn't like even thinking about the death of her last remaining family member. That was what her nightmares were for.

Still, her phobia only kept her frozen in place, staring at her brother's body for a few moments before she rushed to his side. Mikasa reached out to grasp his hand, but the arm closest to her was covered in bandages and the other was attached to an IV, and so Mikasa let her arm fall back to her side.

Mikasa looked over Eren helplessly before glancing over her shoulder at Nanaba. "_How_ did this happen," she whispered. "How does this _keep_ happening to my family?"

Nanaba smiled her kind smile at her. "Erwin and Levi will explain, I promise."

A sudden anger bubbled up inside Mikasa. Why would no one tell her exactly what was going on? What secrets were these people hiding? With a scowl, Mikasa spoke up.

"You should tell me why my brother is strapped to an IV with bandages all over his arm," she said. "Shouldn't that be your job? You said you were a doctor." Nanaba opened her mouth but Mikasa didn't even let her reply. "Why are we even here? And why was Erwin there when our mother died? _Why_ did you save Eren's life?" Her words stuttered to an abrupt halt, followed by a harsh breath ripped from her throat. Blinking her burning eyes, she bowed her head and shut her mouth.

Nanaba rested her hand on the younger girl's shoulder. "Calm down, Mikasa," she said reassuringly. "You don't want to have a panic attack. Take a few deep breaths."

Mikasa closed her eyes and did as Nanaba had told her.

"I know this must be frustrating to you," the Nanaba said as she saw Mikasa relax. "And I wish I could tell you more, but I'm just a doctor. But, I promise that the others _will _tell you everything you want to know. You just have to be patient." Mikasa nodded shakily. "But, right now, you are here to see your injured brother."

This time, Mikasa nodded again, this time far calmer. She looked down at her brother, and rested her hand beside his.

"Would you like some time alone with your brother?" Nanaba asked her kindly.

Mikasa was silent for a couple seconds, but then she shook her head. "No," she said. "I think I want to go back to the conference room. It's time for everyone to explain."

With one of her smiles (although this one might have been more of a smirk), Nanaba smiled. "Then follow me, Miss Ackerman."

Once the two had taken the walk back to the conference room, Mikasa was somewhat surprised to see that Levi and Erwin were the only ones still there. "What happened to everyone else?" she asked bluntly.

"Hanji and Moblit went back to the lab," Erwin replied. "Petra went to work another case we have, and Mike decided to go do some research, and also man the phones." Well, _that_ didn't put a good memory in Mikasa's mind. "Now," Erwin continued, "please sit down Miss Ackerman. I'm sure you're tired."

Mikasa outright scowled at the blond man now. "No," she said, and Erwin raised one of his massive eyebrows at her hard answer. Levi, on the other hand, may have looked almost amused. "Tell me what's going on now, like you said you would."

Instead of answering her politely like a normal person would do, Erwin turned to Nanaba. "Please, Nanaba. If you'll leave the room for a few moments, we can get this all sorted out."

Nanaba nodded tiredly at Erwin before turning to leave the room. And if Mikasa wasn't mistaken, she thought she saw the doctor flash a quick, encouraging smile at her.

Mikasa stared at Erwin who stared back at her. Levi, though, picked up a cup of what appeared to be tea with the tips of his fingers and took a sip.

Erwin spoke up again. "Are you sure you don't want to sit, Mikasa?" he asked with what sounded like concern.

"Erwin," Levi said. "Be quiet and let the girl stand if she wants to." Mikasa looked at the small man with a flicker of surprise. She had no idea why he would speak up to defend her. Just like she had, Erwin turned to Levi, but he was sporting a slight frown.

"Yes," Erwin said. "Of course, Mikasa." He looked at her and smiled suddenly, a smile that was almost an exact copy of Nanaba's smile. Tired and world weary, just like hers was, but Erwin's didn't have the same kindness in his blue eyes as Nanaba did in hers. "You can stand if you want."

Mikasa would have continued to stand but she glanced again at Levi. He seemed utterly bored as he took yet another drink of his tea but his silver eyes were still looking up the top of his cup, staring at her. And for whatever reason, Mikasa decided to pull out the chair closest to her, sit and cross her arms.

"Why am I here?" she asked for what hopefully would be the last time. "What do you want from me and my brother?"

Erwin laced his fingers together. "It isn't a quick story," he warned her. Levi rolled his eyes at that and Mikasa glared at him until he continued. "It begins with your father."

Much to her chagrin, that actually caused her to raise an eyebrow. "Scott Ackerman or Grisha Jaeger?"

"Both," Erwin replied.

..

**Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everyone! Have chapter five.**

**I got a lot of great presents this year but I'd really love some reviews too, please.**

**Special thanks to Wolfgrowl for being my beta reader**


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